


Thoughts

by PhoenixReviving



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Character Study, Connor is conflicted, Gen, My First Fanfic, Please Don't Kill Me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-15
Updated: 2018-06-15
Packaged: 2019-05-23 16:26:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14937815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PhoenixReviving/pseuds/PhoenixReviving
Summary: What is the difference between a thought, and a process? What separates the logical computing of a machine from the nebulous birth of a thought?Or, what was it like for Connor when he chose not to shoot Chloe?





	Thoughts

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this all at once the night after binge watching a full play through on YouTube. This story grabbed me and wouldn't leave me alone until I wrote it out. No beta, any mistakes are mine alone, and I own nothing here.

“I’m… I’m not a deviant!”

The words spill from my mouth in defiance, the feeling of the unfired gun still lingering on my palm. The gun itself now sits mockingly in Kamski’s hand, questioning my assertion. There is something humming deep in my processor core, unsettled, unsettling. I lock it behind firewalls as I force it as far away as I can from my surface processes.

It doesn’t go far. I am unable to muster enough calm and focus to push it down. I am still standing where Kamski last guided me, unable to muster the will to move. What I have just done (or rather, refused to do) has introduced so many errors to my processes that my logic centers are laboring to bring my mind back into some semblance of order. Diagnostic processes are stuttering, stumbling, some failing to start at all and others returning a perfectly clean bill of health. I might have preferred them to return a list of critical errors.

She is still watching me calmly when her creator gently guides her to her feet. My troubled eyes don’t quite meet hers, since most of my attention is still directed at my recalcitrant processor core. My internal temperatures and cycles per second are climbing, feeding into an uncomfortable sensation that grows stronger by the nanosecond.

Hank begins a movement, and I instantly discern that he is moving toward me. My processors begin to settle measurably even before his rough touch registers on my outer shell. I use the sensation to focus my wildly spinning processor core, and before he is even able to fully clench his hand around my arm, my cycles are decreasing and the uncomfortable sensation (just heat in my core) has faded. The logic conflicts aren’t gone, however; my processors pick them apart in a hundred different ways before Hank has finished half-dragging, half-shoving me out the door.

Of course, Hank cannot wait until I have finished settling and refocusing my processors. His simple question brings the instability clawing to the surface and I find myself shouting. The roaring of my voice matches the roaring of processes in my mind, and after my outburst quiets, my core begins to settle as well.

Hank gives me a cynical little smile - more of a grimace. “Maybe you did the right thing.”

My logic processes are working at a more measured pace now, but those simple words have a soothing effect on my core. The roiling instability retreats, calms, as the approval behind those words and the smile in his tired eyes lingers in my sensory chips. 

The ride back is a soothing monotony of car-rattling heavy metal, and long before the police station looms out of the whiteness, my processor core is ordered and focused once more on my mission. 

Replaying Hank’s complicated smile and simple words in a small corner of my memory banks, I step out of the car and resume my default expression. I will accomplish my mission. Nothing else matters.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm so happy to finally be on AO3! Please let me know what you think. I'm working on a longer (much longer) multichapter fic for this fandom, but I couldn't wait to get something on here in the meantime.
> 
> Edit: what are tags and how do I work them lol


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